Wednesday, December 31, 2008

Leggo My Oeuf

Phacellophora camtschatica, the fried egg jellyfish.  Really.

Today I thought I might just lay my head on the keyboard and see what it spelled out, but then I saw a discussion on Dining@Large about putting a fried egg on a bison burger.   Here you go.  This is probably the only verse meditation upon that subject.   I didn't think much of this poem at first, but it grew on me a little.   Mixing some Sartrian (is that a word?) existential concepts into lunch dishes is novel.  With Being-in-itself you get egg roll.   Definitely a nominee for the Pretentious Bastard Hall of Fame.

 

                        The Oeuf of Paris
   
                                         A man is what he eats, but a people eats what it is.
                                         – Socrates

   
In the land of super suede brief cases 
all I see is, how would Sartre have said it, 
the thing-in-itself – the egg.
   
“It is the French way.”
   
Thai cabbage salad with peanut
sauce: where’s the spice, the umph?
Instead a hard boiled egg on top.
   
“But that is how it is done.”
   
A floating oeuf dur regatta on 
Bengali shrimp soup?  
   
“It’s the essence of life.”
   
It may have been a life, but on a pizza,
it’s an arrogant slimy eye.
   
The thing-in-itself, for Parisians
is being Parisian, seeing
themselves winking back
from their pizza, being-as-food.

 
1999

1 comment:

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